Do you consider a book based on its popularity?

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

What you say is true. There is probably no such thing as a correct reading, but there are such things as incorrect readings. That is valid and well put, but let us not stop there. I think there is still room in that maxim to imply that there are such things as privileged positions, and polyphony is no sure road to truth. A statement may be right but not necessarily informative or insightful. For instance, a lot of your reviews on Aristophanes emphasize the incidental while omitting what is primary to the text, and your technique while appropriate to a modern novel isn't so well suited to a fourth century play. I think that JBI has the right of it when he says that there are better ways to do anything, and each task deserves it's special tools.

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I honestly don't understand what you mean. In what way was I not focusing on what was primary thematically in most of my entries about Aristophanes?

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Nevermind, I think I get what you were complaining about now. In response, I simply updated both Lysistra and Thesmophoriazusae entires on the blog to add some of my original thoughts that for whatever reason didn't make it into the post and to address what I think was bothering you about those posts.

I think the only reason something like poetry is able to flourish in Canada is because of government intervention in the arts. In the past, before copyright, poets generally relied on government handouts to survive. Aristo did, Tasso did, and certainly Racine did. When you think of it, how many poets started off as courtiers, or were professional courtiers? Sydney, Wyatt, Chaucer, Spenser?

This argues for an enlightened... "elite"... audience as opposed to that of the disinterested masses. Often an unpopular position to take... but one I find myself leaning toward. Perhaps I am quick to take this position because of the fact that my own field... the traditional visual arts (painting, print, etc...)... have never been the least indebted to the tastes of the masses. Whether a huge audience trudges their way to the latest art exhibition or not is completely irrelevant. The audience who supports the visual arts... the audience who buys is unquestionably an "elite" audience... both in terms of disposable wealth and in terms of knowledge and experience of the filed. Certainly there are the rich collectors who know little of art or who buy purely for investment or status and thus rely upon the opinions of others... and certainly there are artists who have attained star status thanks to the opinions of the "experts/elite" who will rapidly fade into oblivion... but the opinions of the masses have never had the leas impact upon the market. Thomas Kinkade sells endless prints to millions, yet no self-respecting critic or museum would dare to even consider him a real artist. Because of the access wrought by the technology of printing... and later by the technology of sound recording... both literature and music have been deeply impacted by public taste... not for the better in many/most instances, one might argue.

Well, the novel itself is a popular form, similar in many ways to its successor, the cartoon, or the pop-magazine. The rise of the novel created the copyright obsessed form of literature, rather at the costs of poetry. Poetry in itself was more a spoken art than written art in the past, in the sense that the way we see a Shakespeare sonnet, for instance, is in a text, whereas before, through memory, it was a portable, shared text, which transferred perhaps more through word of mouth.

An oral form most certainly would rely on a rich sponsor, or the artist's day job, but a written form comes with the ability to turn art, from an experience, and perhaps a shared one, into a product, a commodity. The tyranny of print culture, one could say, is copyright, as it shackles art into something that can be bought and sold, rather than live between people, and through its sharing of experience.

At least they can't stop people from lending books - as it is though, the library, as an institution is perhaps the greatest supporter of literature, and the greatest service governments do for authors and poets. But now, I think people have become obsessed with buying books, rather than borrowing books.

I'll admit, I'm an advocate of borrowing books, and that being the centre of print culture. It certainly allows for one to get their hands on much better texts, and much better reference material.

But alas, even that is undermined - now the libraries stock more Nora Roberts than anything else. The library becomes abused as an outlet for people to borrow pop-culture, I.E. bypass pop-culture's royalties, rather than as a place where great texts and thought is accumulated. The internet, in many ways, is similar. So much potential, but, because of the way it is accessed, so much rubbish. Google is virtually unable to turn up anything extremely great, unless manipulated severely.

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Originally Posted by JBI

But alas, even that is undermined - now the libraries stock more Nora Roberts than anything else. The library becomes abused as an outlet for people to borrow pop-culture, I.E. bypass pop-culture's royalties, rather than as a place where great texts and thought is accumulated.

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That's so true. Fortunately I work at a university, so I use the academic library as my source of literature, rather than my local public library.

To be honest, I don't really know if something's popular or not, and if I liked the look of a book, the "Richard and Judy" sticker (our version of Oprah) wouldn't put me off. However, since my two main sources of books are the Russian lit section of the university library and an esoteric bookshop in Glastonbury, I doubt I encounter popular books all that often.

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Originally Posted by JBI

The rise of the novel created the copyright obsessed form of literature, rather at the costs of poetry. Poetry in itself was more a spoken art than written art in the past, in the sense that the way we see a Shakespeare sonnet, for instance, is in a text, whereas before, through memory, it was a portable, shared text, which transferred perhaps more through word of mouth.

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I'm not sure if this is entirely true. In fact, it seems wildly ahistorical. Poetry's decline didn't start until the nineteenth century--long after copyright, and long long after publishing. The poets of the eighteenth century were used to a written culture and the commodification of literature, but poetry was still considered to be the main literary form. Paradise Lost, widely considered to be the best poem of the seventeenth century, was written for readers, and not for a listening audience. No doubt publishing changed literature, but it didn't eliminate poetry. What changed in the nineteenth century were readers. Since more were educated and more had time to read, readership widened. The small group who preferred poetry were driven from the field by masses of people who preferred prose narratives. The dispersion of leisure and education lead to the end of the "elite" that we're talking about, not publishing and copyright which had happened long before without ill effects.

I understand why this is an unattractive prospect, though. It would say that the problem is basically incurable. It's much more encouraging to believe that the vulgarization of taste is merely a result of top-down decisions from governments, marketers, and false-prophets like Oprah. All we'd have to do, then, is execute their leaders (not literally), take power, and everything would be alright. But, if the problem is one of readership, leisure, and education then there isn't such an easy solution. You could proselytize to people about how great "high" literature is through every institution, but it wouldn't make much of a difference because those readers don't have the time or education to appreciate whatever art work you're pushing them toward. They would give you a nod perhaps, but then would go right back to reading Nora Roberts or whoever. This is the problem the late Victorians struggled with so mightily: how does a society have culture and democracy at the same time? I don't know if a good solution to this problem has been given yet.

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Originally Posted by Quark

I'm not sure if this is entirely true. In fact, it seems wildly ahistorical. Poetry's decline didn't start until the nineteenth century--long after copyright, and long long after publishing. The poets of the eighteenth century were used to a written culture and the commodification of literature, but poetry was still considered to be the main literary form. Paradise Lost, widely considered to be the best poem of the seventeenth century, was written for readers, and not for a listening audience. No doubt publishing changed literature, but it didn't eliminate poetry. What changed in the nineteenth century were readers. Since more were educated and more had time to read, readership widened. The small group who preferred poetry were driven from the field by masses of people who preferred prose narratives. The dispersion of leisure and education lead to the end of the "elite" that we're talking about, not publishing and copyright which had happened long before without ill effects.

I understand why this is an unattractive prospect, though. It would say that the problem is basically incurable. It's much more encouraging to believe that the vulgarization of taste is merely a result of top-down decisions from governments, marketers, and false-prophets like Oprah. All we'd have to do, then, is execute their leaders (not literally), take power, and everything would be alright. But, if the problem is one of readership, leisure, and education then there isn't such an easy solution. You could proselytize to people about how great "high" literature is through every institution, but it wouldn't make much of a difference because those readers don't have the time or education to appreciate whatever art work you're pushing them toward. They would give you a nod perhaps, but then would go right back to reading Nora Roberts or whoever. This is the problem the late Victorians struggled with so mightily: how does a society have culture and democracy at the same time? I don't know if a good solution to this problem has been given yet.

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Do you have any idea how much a book cost back then? I know it 1800, a thin one volume book (Walter Scott popularized the 3 volume novel) which was more margins than text, came to somewhere around the equivalent of 300$ today.

This is 1600, roughly. Text wasn't that major, yet somehow things got around. If Shakespeare was a text, more than an oral form, naturally, he either would have been unheard of, except for a select few, or, have had more volumes floating around.

There aren't many first editions of sonnets, and there is historical evidence to suggest that some of them were circulating amongst friends before their initial publication. But that's just Shakespeare at the basic level - look at, for instance, Shakespeare as Drama, an oral form, an oral poetry, rather than text, or better yet, an oral poetry like Sir Patrick Spens.

Certainly we know the middle-ages featured literature as more oral than written. That idea somehow carried over for a while, until really the 20th century.

I'm not making all this up, Harold Innis wrote a book about the differences and changes from Oral to Written culture, which takes in a large amount of history from the European world. It's called The Bias of Communication, and I recommend you look into it.

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Originally Posted by JBI

I think the only reason something like poetry is able to flourish in Canada is because of government intervention in the arts. In the past, before copyright, poets generally relied on government handouts to survive. Aristo did, Tasso did, and certainly Racine did. When you think of it, how many poets started off as courtiers, or were professional courtiers? Sydney, Wyatt, Chaucer, Spenser?

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I saw StLukes quote you with this and I had to go back and check the source. You aren't really arguing for a return to patronage are you? If you are, you could definitely use better examples.

Ariosto should be the go to example for the absolute failure of patronage. He works thirty years on Orlando Furioso and gets jack all for his trouble because his patron doesn't like his poetry. Meanwhile, he's running around on diplomatic errands and can't devote his time to his chosen profession.

Tasso might have benefited from the patronage system if he hadn't been completely insane for most of his productive years. He was confined to a madhouse for what, eight years? Then he wanders from province to province a charity case and a broken man. He achieves success relatively early on in life and then implodes. You could hardly say that he had a rich and rewarding relationship with the nobility which allowed him to nurture his talent. After Jerusalem Delivered he doesn't do anything of note.

Racine goes into the employ of the court and that's when he stops writing. Aside from two brief religious plays, Esther and Athalie, written at the request of the queen he was in retirement for like twenty years. The only time he was really productive was when he had to earn a living in the theater competing against Moliere and Corneille.

Wyatt spends much of his time under lock and key in the Tower of London for various political scandals and doesn't even publish anything during his lifetime. But at least he fairs better than Raleigh. Chaucer writes The Complaint to his Purse, which shows how well he was paid, and Spenser fairly blasts courtly life in Colin Clout. Being a courtier could be a pretty rough life.

Let's not forget the case of Ferdowsi who toiled on the Shahnameh for thirty years and when he returned to his patron was offered less than a hundredth of the sum he was promised.

I don't know that you could properly call the arrangements most of these guys had patronage so much as they were day jobs. If you want an example of good patronage you might try Maecenas who gave Horace and Virgil farms to make them self-sufficient.

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Originally Posted by higley

If you knew little about a book other than that everyone is currently raving about it, does that make you want to read it, or do you dismiss it as some trendy work not worth the time? Or at least, does that make you more hesitant to read it?

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I still read it... Actually, in some cases, the popularity makes me want to read it just to see what the fuss is about. If I am going to trash a book, I would like to be able to do it based on good authority (ie, my own) rather than "said so".

The only read I am refusing to read at the moment is Lord of the Rings due to both its popularity and I can't take thousands of pages of fantasy.

There are some sources I trust, the Booker prize short list, or my Mother, for instance. Richard and Judy stickers or the position on the best seller list means nothing. BUT it doesn't mean a book is bad, just because its popular. A million satisfied readers must mean something. (OK apart from Dan Brown)

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Originally Posted by JBI

Certainly we know the middle-ages featured literature as more oral than written. That idea somehow carried over for a while, until really the 20th century.

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I'm not disputing your facts. I'm just pointing out that your timeline may be a little skewed. There was much oral transmission of literature in the middle-ages and renaissance: sure. There isn't really that much in the twentieth-century: also good. It's what in between that I call into question. Are you really trying to say that literature in eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries was transmitted through the spoken word? Or, that copyright wasn't customary in these years? Those would be some really radical suggestions. We know that poets sold their works to magazines and booksellers. These magazines had pretty wide circulation, and books were no rare commodities. By the 1780's book circulation had exceeded 10,000,000! The commerce of written literature was so successful that the government levied rather harsh taxes against, and sales continued to increase despite rising prices. Writing seemed to be doing pretty well by the second half of the eighteenth-century.

I bring this up because I think it conflicts with your diagnosis of poetry's (and high culture's) problem. You said before:

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Well, the novel itself is a popular form, similar in many ways to its successor, the cartoon, or the pop-magazine. The rise of the novel created the copyright obsessed form of literature, rather at the costs of poetry. Poetry in itself was more a spoken art than written art in the past, in the sense that the way we see a Shakespeare sonnet, for instance, is in a text, whereas before, through memory, it was a portable, shared text, which transferred perhaps more through word of mouth.

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The novel here takes part in the decline of "high" culture. It's a step toward cartoons and pop-magazines. It seems like you're saying copyright and writing hurt good literature (typified by poetry) and gave rise to mediocre literature (the novel and its descendants). I think it's important to note that poetry's place in society began to decline in the second half of the nineteenth-century, and that written language and copyright became predominant one-hundred years earlier. In the eighteenth-century the break from patronage, enactment of copyright, and the growth of written culture all occurred. Yet, poetry was still the main literary form. I don't think you can say that copyright and written culture stopped poetry because poetry's popularity persisted well after the printed word became the norm. You have to look at changes in the nineteenth-century to explain the fall of poetry. The change that immediately comes to mind is the change in readership. More were literate and had time to read in the nineteenth century. The educated elite who ruled the literary scene in the eighteenth-century were then overcome by a larger group of less-educated, but nonetheless book-hungry, crowd. This is also why there's so much anxiety about the vulgarization of culture amongst the late Victorians. This explanation makes more sense because it aligns better with the historical record. No doubt, printing and copyright changed literature, but you're overstating it's role if you try to assert that it killed poetry.

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Originally Posted by JBI

I'm not making all this up, Harold Innis wrote a book about the differences and changes from Oral to Written culture, which takes in a large amount of history from the European world. It's called The Bias of Communication, and I recommend you look into it.

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I'm not familiar with the work, so, if you think there's something in the book which helps you, you might want to quote it--or at least say what it is.

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Originally Posted by JBI

now the libraries stock more Nora Roberts than anything else. The library becomes abused as an outlet for people to borrow pop-culture, I.E. bypass pop-culture's royalties, rather than as a place where great texts and thought is accumulated. The internet, in many ways, is similar. So much potential, but, because of the way it is accessed, so much rubbish. Google is virtually unable to turn up anything extremely great, unless manipulated severely.

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Now this we agree on, and I suppose we probably agree on the question posed by the thread, too: "Do you consider a book based on its popularity?". I think we would both say "no", and probably for similar reasons. Many of the readers who contribute to a book's popularity are swayed by things which I would not be swayed by--like marketing or whatever.

I saw StLukes quote you with this and I had to go back and check the source. You aren't really arguing for a return to patronage are you? If you are, you could definitely use better examples.

Mortal... I agree that one cannot easily argue for patronage or the free-market as a better model for creation and the creators. Johnson declares that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," but then William Blake proves the opposite to be equally true (although even Blake had illusions of making a great deal of wealth from his projects). In either instance it seems as if there is no guarantee that merit will result in fame and fortune. The artist must either please the single wealthy patron or the masses. I'm not certain that one is easier to achieve than the other. We may dismiss Dan Brown and the Harry Potter novels and Thomas Kinkade paintings as aesthetically and artistically stunted... but for some reason they are able to achieve a level of success with a large audience that endless other equally bad and far better works of art do not. If such success were easy to achieve why wouldn't the intelligent artist simply churn out the product, make his or her millions, and then retire to focus full time upon achieving something of true artistic merit? Again... because of the unique situation of the traditional arts being at once an image and a unique luxury craft-object, the impact of the tastes of the masses has never played much of a role. When a new painting by a leading contemporary artist can easily command 6 or 7 figures, and even a good work by a locally known artist can demand a price range in the thousands... even the tens of thousands... then it is highly unlikely that the artist is going to give the least concern to what the masses think. Considering that there is almost certainly an audience for anything and everything, perhaps the best strategy is to create what you believe in for yourself.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I saw StLukes quote you with this and I had to go back and check the source. You aren't really arguing for a return to patronage are you? If you are, you could definitely use better examples.

Ariosto should be the go to example for the absolute failure of patronage. He works thirty years on Orlando Furioso and gets jack all for his trouble because his patron doesn't like his poetry. Meanwhile, he's running around on diplomatic errands and can't devote his time to his chosen profession.

Tasso might have benefited from the patronage system if he hadn't been completely insane for most of his productive years. He was confined to a madhouse for what, eight years? Then he wanders from province to province a charity case and a broken man. He achieves success relatively early on in life and then implodes. You could hardly say that he had a rich and rewarding relationship with the nobility which allowed him to nurture his talent. After Jerusalem Delivered he doesn't do anything of note.

Racine goes into the employ of the court and that's when he stops writing. Aside from two brief religious plays, Esther and Athalie, written at the request of the queen he was in retirement for like twenty years. The only time he was really productive was when he had to earn a living in the theater competing against Moliere and Corneille.

Wyatt spends much of his time under lock and key in the Tower of London for various political scandals and doesn't even publish anything during his lifetime. But at least he fairs better than Raleigh. Chaucer writes The Complaint to his Purse, which shows how well he was paid, and Spenser fairly blasts courtly life in Colin Clout. Being a courtier could be a pretty rough life.

Let's not forget the case of Ferdowsi who toiled on the Shahnameh for thirty years and when he returned to his patron was offered less than a hundredth of the sum he was promised.

I don't know that you could properly call the arrangements most of these guys had patronage so much as they were day jobs. If you want an example of good patronage you might try Maecenas who gave Horace and Virgil farms to make them self-sufficient.

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Sorry, I realize now that I perhaps wasn't clear. I wasn't advocating patronage, in the sense that I was advocating the poet's role within the superstructure of a cultural. By making poetry a program of interest, recognized and funded by the government, the Canadian system has enabled poets to be a part of the discourse of the country, without having to starve themselves to do so. The discourse of poetry, then, becomes a part of the discourse of national/anti-national experience and identity. The mass market doesn't brand people heroes, in this sense, but the tradition itself.

It's an interesting concept, that perhaps needs further exploration. Within the frame of Canadian discourse, the government's (this is, the art department of the government) and the national heritage boards here seek to define Canada's culture as multicultural, in order to fix elisions made in representations in the past. The mainstream, however, and many members of government, representing more reactionary right groups, are somewhat resistant, and ultimately unsupportive. Up until the mid-90s, to an extent the publishers too had somewhat racist fixations, disallowing Chinese-Canadian poets, for instance, the same opportunities as Anglo-Saxon-Canadian poets.

The national support then, acts as a balance, allowing for unheard people to get money to support themselves, and for their voices to have the opportunities to be developed. After all, a good poet usually writes rather slowly. Yeats wrote at a rate of about 2 lines a day. When one's projected sales are 10,000 or less, and one comes as an immigrant, with all the disadvantages that implies (there are still major human rights issues within labor and communities within Canada) these sorts of programs allow for a poet to be able to actually practice their craft.

Pure capitalism cannot allow for this. Canadian publishers are always going to be at a disadvantage, in comparison to our neighbors. But through support of its poets, the Canadian system allows for greater opportunities.

So, in a sense, I'm not looking to reestablish the pay once form of patronage, where the noble would buy the manuscript, but what I am looking at is the importance placed by the governing power's interest and endorsement of poetry. I'm no Wyatt expert, but from what I know, the court life created the backdrop completely for his poetry. His job as a courtier certainly gave him, at least in his early career, the opportunities to receive the exposure he did, which enabled him to write his poetry. If we bring that into a contemporary setting, government endorsement of creative projects is the same thing. It is certainly central to the survival of Canadian art, especially cinema.

I read a study a few years ago that said the average American adult's literacy level is around that of 8th grade children. (I think I'm being generous here; some claim American literacy is closer to 5th-grade level.) That means the average Joe you meet on the street has the reading comprehension of a 13-year-old. :rolleyes:

I think that's pretty indicative of the quality of best-seller lists.

Admittedly, I don't know how America's literacy compares to the rest of the world's, but it's been getting worse in the past few years. I remember that during the Harry Potter craze, I read about lots of schoolteachers who embraced the series, simply because it got their kids to read....rather than play on the wii. It's no wonder so many students hate their English classes. If most of them can't even handle Harry Potter, how can their teachers really expect them to digest Heart of Darkness or Moby Dick?

I think you'll see the quality of best-seller lists go up if and only if there are some radical changes to the way reading is taught at the grade school level.

Sorry, I got a little off-topic.

JBI... what you are describing... government support for the arts... by whatever name... is still a form of patronage. Personally, I have mixed feelings about the endeavor. Certainly I am for continued support of the larger institutions: orchestras, ballets, theaters, art museums, etc... On the other hand I question governmental support of individual artists. Certainly, I understand that some artists struggle to survive within the context of the free market system. I haven't been raking in the vast piles of money myself. On the other hand, it seems justified to question just how successful governmental support of individual artists has been. It would seem that on this side of the border many of the arts councils and endowments entrusted with allocating governmental money (taxpayer money) are nothing more than mutual admiration societies dominated by academic poets/artists/writers/composers unable to survive within the free market system and convinced that they and their ilk are somehow "entitled" to governmental support... in spite of the fact that the art quite often is offensive or inaccessible to the very taxpayers who are footing the bill... and not often proven to be of a great lasting merit worthy of the support in spite of its current unpopularity. The artists employed by the WPA in the 1930s and 1940s made a concerted effort to reach the public who were essentially employing them. Why should an obscure minimalist composer teaching at some liberal arts college in Vermont, an experimental poet teaching creative writing in Kansas, or an installation artist using blood and feces to explore issues of race and gender identity while employed as a gallery director in Omaha be entitled to the support of the taxpayers when it is more than doubtful that such art represents anything truly essential to the culture as a whole? I'm somehow unconvinced that the government makes a better patron than either the masses or the wealthy "elite" under a free market system.

Well, you hit the problem. On this side of the border, the notion of the "culture as a whole" is considered by many writers to be offensive. There is no coherent Canadian tradition, and the fact that the bulk of our writers are immigrants, or from immigrant families, many of which with racial/linguistic separators from the mainstream, makes any sense of "support the culture" quite difficult.

In a sense, I see it as a way in which the government, well, their arts system at any rate, tries to distort the perceived cultural identity of Canada, because, after all, even the whole "cultural mosaic" has been exposed as flawed, harmful, and segratory.

The only way for a poet to really make money, is to enter into the big anthologies. In this sense, that means, a) American/English anthologies, like the Norton (of which, I think, I counted around half a dozen Canadians, with about 2 poems each - less than the selection of Ezra Pound alone), or somehow get giant sales. Most associate themselves with academic institutions (another government funded program, as all universities (the ones that actually are credited at any rate) are government funded), or to get a day job.

But the question then comes, with the rise of the anthology as a sort of form, and the intense research and effort needed to really put together a good anthology, how are these people going to manage? And even when they do, how are they going to manage? It's OK if they are from rich, established families, but from poor, or newly arrived families, who face racial/cultural prejudices in workplaces and society, and even in the publishing world?

No, the government system is essential. Not only does it protect artists from publishing tyranny, but also from imperialist tyranny.


It's not that they just hand them salaries. It's that they give them specific grants, to go traveling to do research, or to be able to put together a specific program. All of them must have at least 1 book published, or 4 stories, or 10 poems within major periodicals.

The most anyone can really get towards a project, is something like 25,000, which is helpful, but it isn't exactly a million dollars, and probably more than the book will make in publication anyway.

I think that is a somewhat responsible system. In truth, if these artists were living at home off of welfare, they would make similar amounts of money.